Volume 24, Number 4
Dec 2000

"Preserving" Newspapers

by Ellen McCrady

Nicholson Baker published an article in the July 24 New
Yorker, called "Deadline," about how libraries sell, destroy or
discard newspapers after microfilming them, even if they are the
last copy in existence, and even if the microfilm is incomplete or
unreadable. The response from book lovers and the preservation
community, in publications, e-mails and the Conservation DistList,
was unprecedented. I collected 9 comments (10 including my own)
during October and November:

Nicholson Baker, the same person who did an exposé of the
dumping of books at the San Francisco Public Library, has now raised
an alarm about the disappearance of original series of newspapers
from libraries across the country, including our national
repository, the Library of Congress. This report, "Deadline" (The
New Yorker, 7/24/00), should be required reading for all librarians,
historians, and anyone who cares about the loss of the irreplaceable
information to be found in scores of important and novel newspapers
from the past.... His article should serve as a wakeup call to many
institutions where originals still reside.

2. Winston Tabb, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the
Library of Congress, posted a comment on the article October 6,
saying, in part,

...In asserting that newsprint will last indefinitely, Mr. Baker
is overlooking several decades of scientific research that
contradicts the linchpin of his argument. Library of Congress
experts shared that information, as well as more recent unpublished
scientific data, with Mr. Baker when he visited the Library in
December 1998....

Mr. Baker would have your readers believe that the Library of
Congress, in a clandestine manner, routinely discarded perfectly
useable newspaper volumes in a zealous search for shelf space. This
is both ridiculous and insulting. Librarians must make decisions
every day about how best to acquire, preserve and make permanently
accessible the record of human creativity; but they cannot keep
everything, or keep everything in its original "container." For
example, the Library of Congress retains all newspapers in hard copy
from the 17th and 18th centuries....

Even though the Library of Congress and other libraries do not
have the luxury of preserving and storing hundreds of thousands of
rapidly deteriorating newspapers in their original format, we
welcome help from people like Nicholson Baker who apparently can
afford to do so.

3. I replied to Winston Tabb's posting October 14. Although I
admire and respect Mr. Tabb, on this point I had to differ.

I think Winston Tabb doesn't believe Nicholson Baker when he says
the pages in [some of] the bound newspaper volumes he handled were
white and strong. I believe him. One has to be careful about
applying research to real-life situations. I tried to explain this
in the Abbey Newsletter twice: "Keeping Newsprint Fresh and
White," p. 49, April 1987, a brief article quoting Bill Blackbeard,
who understands newsprint; and "Pedigree Comics," by Pat Kochanek,
p. 99-101, Nov. 1994, in which the author describes the pristine
condition of the "Mile-High Collection" of comics from the 1920s and
1930s.

It is not generally recognized that newsprint is vulnerable to a
different set of stresses than other kinds of paper. This means that
storage conditions that eliminate those stresses can prolong the
life of newsprint almost indefinitely. Mr. Blackbeard described
them: "Any publication printed on standard quality newsprint
from 1870 through at least 1970 (popular use of newsprint starting
in the 1860s) will remain exactly as fresh and white (or in some
cases, of course, fresh and grayish) as the day it went through the
presses so long as it is kept secure from a) prolonged exposure to
sunlight (i.e., for days on end); 2) temperature elevations
sustained above 60°-70°F (as in overheated rooms or in
structures open to high summer heat regularly); 3) high prolonged
humidity combined with heat (a reasonable amount of moisture
combined with cool air seems to do no harm); and 4) heavy continued
and careless reading or referral use of the publication...."

I heard that some of the Europeans at one of the IFLA conferences
[1987] were shocked at our practice of discarding serials after the
spines were cut off for microfilming....

4. Amy McCrory (mccrory.7@osu.edu), who works with the Blackbeard
Collection at Ohio State University, called October 17. I gave her
the reference to the Bukovsky paper from Restaurator which
described accelerated aging of newsprint with light rather than
heat. Newsprint lost a great deal of strength under light stress,
even when it had been previously deacidified.

Ms. McCrory faxed me a copy of a 1988 article from the Abbey
Newsletter, which she had found on the Internet: "Newspaper
Preservation Around the World," from vol. 12 #1, Jan. 1988. This
was based on Susan Swartzburg's 28-page report of the August 1987
meeting in London, "International Symposium on Newspaper
Preservation and Access."

The symposium was sponsored by IFLA's Working Group on
Newspapers, which was surveying preservation policies of newspaper
collections worldwide.

Many of those present were concerned about the Preussischer
Kulturbesitz's policy of sending original newspapers out on
interlibrary loan. At the Bibliothèque Nationale, some
restoration is done before filming and some afterward, and the
papers are bound when possible. Johann Mannerheim (Royal Library,
Sweden) did not believe that microforms replace originals and
maintained that originals should be preserved for safety. In Great
Britain, the library retains an original deposit copy, wrapped in
acid-free paper and stored flat. In Hungary, the archival masters
are stored in air conditioned facilities; papers are repaired before
filming when necessary; they are deacidified and strengthened. In
Japan, each publisher sends the library an edition printed on
special paper, on one side only, for quality of microfilm image.

Two years later (May 22-24, 1989), the Library of Congress and
IFLA held an international symposium in Washington, DC, on "Managing
the Preservation of Serial Literature." At this conference,
Margaret Child (Smithsonian Libraries) and Andrew B. Phillips
(British Library) discussed the topic, "Must Publications be
Preserved in Original Format?" and David Clements was the discussion
leader. Margaret Child's position was "Not necessarily," and Andrew
Phillips's reply was "Yes, publications must be preserved in
original format, especially newspapers...."

5. Roy Moxham (London) posted his comments on October 17.

I read the letter to The New Yorker written by
Winston Tabb of the Library of Congress, with some concern. It
seems to me that Nicholson Baker should be congratulated, not
censured, for bringing important issues to our attention. In his
original article Nicholson Baker did not assert that all newsprint
will last indefinitely, but that it is "often surprisingly well
preserved." Many of us would agree with that. To back up his
argument, the article reproduced rare color-printed newsprint in
excellent condition that was being de-accessioned.

Nicholson Baker then made two important, but often overlooked,
observations about microfilmed material which is being
de-accessioned:

Much old microfilm is of extremely poor quality.

Much color material has only been microfilmed in black and white.

I would also add that many newspapers ran into several different
editions, but often only one has been microfilmed.

The University of London <ies@sas.ac.uk> will be holding a
conference, "Do we want to keep our newspapers?" 12-13 March 2001 to
consider these issues. I hope preservation professionals will
contribute to a constructive debate.

6. Colin Webb, Director of the Preservation Services Branch of
the National Library of Australia, posted his comments on October
19:

...I must say that Mr. Baker's article struck a responsive chord.
It raises issues that are most important for us to discuss and learn
from.

Trained as firm believers in the "newsprint won't wait" school,
at the National Library of Australia we have often been dismayed to
see the results of rapid deterioration, but just as often we've been
surprised to see 100 year old issues that were just fine. Our
conclusion has been that newsprint degrades at variable rates, and
that it is worth copying the information on it to a more stable
medium.

At the same time, we've seen some great microfilm, but we've also
seen some that was shocking—and a whole lot in-between.... We
have tried to address quality concerns by raising the standard of
filming, project design, specifications and project management, and
we have some a long way in the past 10-15 years in this country. But
I'm certain we all hold significant collections of film that are
quite inadequate, simply because most institutions do not have the
resources to check thoroughly for errors in the film they either
produce or purchase from someone else....

While the article seems unfair at a number of points—some
of them covered in Winston Tabb's letter—there are things here
that we need to listen to and consider, things that are relevant to
preservation management, at least in Australia.

Whether or not it is a fair basis for criticism, it has been
difficult to manage the expectations that have arisen (created and
nursed along by both the imaging industry and by our own profession
at times) that copying is the only cost-effective way of preserving
newspapers.

Our preservation profession has sometimes found it easier to
enlist support by telling half-truths (probably nine-tenth truths).
We did it with environmental conditions for storing collections, we
probably did it with accelerated aging, and it looks like we might
have done it with microfilming. We can see the same phenomenon with
digitization, although the "digitization=preservation" lobby is
largely coming from outside the preservation profession.

Managers with too much to do, "80/20" agendas, and a host of new
pressures piling up, tend to simplify the evidence, look for the
broad approach, and aren't very interested in what look like
redundant solutions. As preservation managers we fall for this, and
so do our senior executives. Who wants to hear that you might need
to store newspapers in the dark, taking up ever increasing space,
quite possibly in controlled conditions, and also microfilm them to
give users access? And to keep three generations of the microfilm,
stored in very high quality conditions?

We're fortunate here—while we've invested heavily in
microfilming (and are about to in digitization), so far there has
not been a strong push to destroy newspapers. Although practices
vary, guillotining spines to improve the speed or ease of copying is
not considered acceptable practice here for rare material. To the
contrary, we have a National Plan for Newspapers (the NPLAN), which
tries to address these issues in a sensible way. The basic aims of
the NPLAN include the preservation of at least one paper copy of
every newspaper issued in the country, preferably in the State or
Territory in which it was published, or by the National Library if
the title has national coverage.

7. Donald Farren, retired administrator of special collections,
was at the 1989 conference at the Library of Congress, "Managing the
Preservation of Serial Literature: An International Symposium." He
relates the events of that conference in his own posting of October
22.

...Most of the participants in the conference from abroad were
representatives of their national library, who were expected, as
leaders in their countries, to disseminate the deliberations of the
conference. Following are one man's memories of that event.

In my naive way I initially thought that the conference was a
forum for examining the issues of preserving and conserving
newspapers, and in fact, to lend an appearance of objectivity to the
proceedings, the organizers commissioned a paper that was circulated
to conference participants that favored the conservation of
newspapers in their original form. That thankless job had been
assigned to an author who had not been able to really think through
the issues, as a result of which the author's defense of conserving
original artifacts was based chiefly on sentimental grounds rather
than on an understanding of the intellectual significance of
artifacts per se. Thus the real agenda of the conference soon became
apparent—namely getting the conferees to endorse the doctrine
that the only way of "saving newspapers" was to microfilm them. (I
lost my initial naiveté when I learned that the organizers of
the conference had drafted a statement of the resolutions of the
conference in that vein before it had begun.)

In the face of the formidable pressure to endorse a policy of
saving newspapers by chipping, filming, and tossing them, I advanced
the modest proposal that national libraries should assume the
responsibility (distributed countrywide as appropriate) to Conserve
in Original Form at Least One Copy of Every Newspaper. At the time,
the only person at the conference who publicly supported my proposal
was Randy Silverman, and the charge against my proposal, on the
grounds of impracticality (as if it was practical to microfilm
everything without saving the evidence and the content borne by at
least one original copy) was led by (since I am naming names) one
Margaret Child, who was then responsible for promoting preservation
microfilming for the National Endowment for the Humanities, who as
such—as a gateway to funding, swung a lot of weight. (Ms.
Child was, I remember, a staunch opponent. She declared that she
had researched her dissertation by reading newspapers on
microfilm and that the experience hadn't ruined her eyes, as
if the inconvenience of reading microfilm was an issue central,
rather than peripheral, to conservation and preservation policy.)
The result of my making a proposal to conserve was that the proposal
was taken under advisement and thereafter not again seriously
considered.

Despite the inevitability of an endorsement of mass microfilming,
the conference had its points, indeed poignant moments. I remember
one representative of the national library of a developing country
commenting that microfilming was all well and good but that in her
country they did not have a reliable enough source of electricity to
they could count on machines of any kind, including microfilm
readers, functioning.

As Nicholson Baker's piece suggests, time will tell, and public
opinion will decide, which policy—selective (at least)
conservation or mass microfilming—is the wisest.